NY Water Tests Find No PFOA, PFOS Threat

New York health and environmental regulators said that, after statewide targeted sampling for the two cancer-causing industrial chemicals PFOA and PFOS, there were no new cases of drinking water contamination found.

Led by the state's health and environmental conservation agencies, The Chronicle reported that the Water Quality Rapid Response Team, stated that “it mapped more than 250 facilities that reported using or storing PFOA, or perfluorooctanoic acid, used in making non-stick products, or the related chemical PFOS, used in firefighting foam.”

Officials said that the response team reported 38 drinking water systems that were within a half mile of those facilities were tested, however, most did not have any signal of the chemical and were also well below the U.S. EPA’s advisory level.

The chemicals are classified by the EPA as “unregulated contaminants,'' which means that water supply operators are not required to routinely test for them. Last year, environmental groups pressed legislators statewide after a high level of PFOA was found in drinking water in the Rensselaer County villages of Hoosick Falls and Petersburgh.

Officials told The Chronicle that monitoring will continue at the 38 drinking water systems, “which are in Cattaraugus, Delaware, Dutchess, Franklin, Greene, Nassau, Oneida, Orange, Putnam, Rockland, Seneca, Suffolk, and Sullivan counties.”

The agencies did not identify the specific water supplies that had been sampled or name the facilities that were handling the chemicals. The facilities “were identified through a survey sent to fire departments, airports, military installations, industries and chemical storage facilities.”

In Newburgh, NY, state officials launched a unique effort to offer blood tests to the city’s 28,000 residents in November after the chemical PFOS was detected in the drinking water reservoir at levels that were above federal guidelines.

NBC New York reported that results of the testing are expected to be released sometime this year. The results will not tell if people are actually at an increased risk for any health problems, “but will show how their exposure compares to others.”

"The fact that I've been drinking that water for years, and my daughter's been drinking and bathing in it, that's shocking to me," Stuart Sachs, an artist who moved to Newburg from Brooklyn 14 years ago, told NBC. "My daughter is 11. What diseases is she going to have to look forward to? It's scary."

This past summer, in the wake of contamination that forced the closure of the primary drinking water supply for Newburgh, City Manager Michael Ciaravino asked the state’s Department of Health (DOH) to begin testing residents.

According to the Times Herald-Record, in a letter sent to DOH in July, Ciaravino said that there is “adequate justification” for the state to offer testing for residents that were exposed to PFOS, whose levels led to the closure of Washington Lake.

For similar stories visit Water Online’s Source Water Contamination Solutions Center.